In short: Review your pricing every three months, and talk to clients about it at least once or twice a year. Wages, rent, software and materials go up every year. If you never pass that on, your margin shrinks. Start with your most underpriced clients, a few at a time, with a plan.

Prefer to watch? The 60-second version is on YouTube.

Raising prices is one of the first things that shows me how financially strong a business really is. Most founders are scared of the conversation. They worry they’ll lose clients. I get it: five years ago I was exactly the same.

Do you actually need to raise your prices?

Maybe not, if you’re genuinely happy with your profit, your clients and the business. If that’s you, amazing. Keep enjoying it.

But for most owners, costs are rising whether they notice or not. Software companies put their prices up. Your team needs better wages. Rent goes up. Materials cost more. If you can’t pass those increases on to clients, your margin gets squeezed a little more every year.

Why do most founders underprice?

Most founders leave a job believing they can do it better: a better builder, a better broker, a better marketer. And they usually can. Then they find out business is hard. It’s competitive, there’s no money coming in yet, and the stress kicks in. So instead of saying “my service is better and it costs more because of these reasons”, they default to “I have to win the deal, I’ll do it cheap.”

That makes sense when you’re starting out. It’s why I’d say 80 to 90% of the businesses we work with are underpriced at the start. The job is to get yourself up that curve and price for the value you actually provide.

What happens if you never raise prices?

The classic small-business move is to tell yourself “every new client will pay more.” I did it for years. It isn’t a fix. You’re only repricing a small slice of revenue while your existing clients, the bulk of the business, stay where they were years ago. You end up with five-year-old prices and a new-age cost base.

Here’s what the difference looks like in real numbers. One client of ours did 75 jobs a year at $8,000 each, and his costs were rising about 8% a year. Raising prices around 18% on the same 75 jobs took his profit from $117K to $202K. Selling 93 jobs at the old price needed a bigger factory and added only about $10K. I walk through both paths in the whiteboard episode.

How do you raise prices without losing good clients?

Don’t send everyone an email saying prices are up 30%. Have a plan and a process behind it:

• Look at your input costs and what they’ve done over the last few years.

• Go through your client list and find the clients who are furthest underpriced.

• Work through them steadily: maybe five pricing conversations a month, or pricing reviews with every client in July and December.

A plan takes the stress out of it. It stops your brain telling you you’ll have to tell every client at once and lose them all.

Will you lose some clients?

Probably a few. In our accounting business we rated every client, tracked our time and found we were winning on some and losing on others. We moved prices gradually. Did we lose some clients? Yes. Was it great? No. But it isn’t great to be unprofitable on a client either.

Often the clients you lose are ones you didn’t really want. And your good clients will tell you they would have paid more anyway.

Why a price rise isn’t taking from your clients

If you’re a people pleaser like me, this still hurts. But increasing your prices doesn’t mean you’re taking away from clients. It means you’re more sustainable, with more revenue to reinvest in the things that serve them. If your clients keep coming back, you’re probably doing a good job. Back yourself, and price like it.

Frequently asked questions

How often should a small business review its prices?

I’d review pricing every three months, whatever the industry. Some industries price every job, which is great. At a minimum, talk to clients about pricing every six or twelve months.

How much should I raise my prices by?

Enough to cover your real cost increases and protect your gross margin. Work it out from your own numbers, not a rule of thumb.

What if I lose clients when I raise prices?

You might lose a few, often ones you didn’t want. And a price rise is never forever: if the feedback is genuinely bad, you can pare it back.

Key takeaways

• Most businesses we work with are underpriced, often 80 to 90% of them when they start.

• Charging new clients more doesn’t fix it. Your existing clients are most of your revenue.

• On the same 75 jobs, an 18% price rise took one client’s profit from $117K to $202K.

• A plan (five clients a month, or reviews every July and December) takes the fear out of it.

Last updated: 26 October 2026.